Field of Technology
This disclosure relates to audio analysis, and more specifically to provision of a real-time speech behavior visualization and gamification tool that promotes better interpersonal skills and decision-making in conversations, supports situational awareness for call center teams, enables better coaching of call center staff by supervisors, and and enables higher quality interactions with customers.
Background
R&D focused on customer connections to and from the call center has been around for some time, and supervisors and managers will review call length and call frequency data from time-to-time to understand performance. Thanks to speech-to-text technologies, they may also search recordings of conversations for key words. However, so far the art has not found effective ways to support active feedback, supervision and review of conversations based on behavior, especially in real time and across distributed teams. In this context, the term behavior refers to how people speak, and specifically the tonal, pacing, mirroring and turn-taking measurements that describe how people come across to each other independently of the words that they use.
Providing an excellent customer experience in call centers has increasingly become strategic for enterprise, and there is an increasing understanding that how an agent comes across can affect conversation outcomes. The status quo in call center agent feedback and supervision is for supervisors to randomly select an agent-member conversation to listen to and provide commentary. Agents have few tools that readily support self-study and self-improvement. Supervisors have no way to track multiple agents, and few methods for intelligently selecting which conversation to listen in on. Many supervisors only review a single conversation a month for each of the agents in their team and thus have little information about how their agents are sounding while they are speaking with customers. This situation becomes even more challenging because call center teams are increasing dispersed, with many agents now working from home thus reducing a supervisor's ability to listen for tone and behavior by walking around an office space. At the same time, call center teams can also suffer from significant turnover, resulting in a high need for training.
Description of Prior Art
United States Patent Application Publication 2011/0307258 “Real-Time Application of Interaction Analytics” (Liberman et al. Dec. 15, 2011) discloses, in the Abstract, “A method and apparatus for providing real-time assistance related to an interaction associated with a contact center, comprising steps or components for: receiving at least a part of an audio signal of an interaction captured by a capturing device associated with an organization, and metadata information associated with the interaction; performing audio analysis of the at least part of the audio signal, while the interaction is still in progress to obtain audio information; categorizing at least a part of the metadata information and the audio information, to determine a category associated with the interaction, while the interaction is still in progress to obtain audio information; and taking an action associated with the category.”
U.S. Pat. No. 6,480,600 “Call and Data Correspondence in a Call-in Center Employing Virtual Restructuring for Computer Telephony Integrated Functionality” (Neyman et al. Nov. 12, 2002) discloses, in the Abstract, “A call center having agent stations comprising telephones connected to computer stations by a Telephone Application Programming Interface (TAPI)-compliant bridge has data pertaining to callers stored in a database on a local area network (LAN) to which the computer stations are also connected. Origination data for incoming calls, both conventional calls to the telephones and computer-simulated calls to the computer platforms, is used as a key to extract data pertaining to calls from the database for display on video display units (VDUs) of the computer workstations where the calls are terminated. In some cases, data is only extracted and displayed for calls from previously listed origination points.”
United States Patent Application Publication 2013/0177148 “System and Method for Analyzing Agent Interactions” (Lee Jul. 11, 2013) discloses, in the Abstract, “A system and method for analyzing agent interactions is provided. An interaction between an agent and a business is provided to analysts. Performance scores for the interaction are received from each of the analysts and compared. A deviation between the performance score is determined. The deviation is compared to a threshold. Further interactions are provided to at least one of the analysts when the deviation falls below the threshold. A further performance score for the interaction is received from the analyst and provided to the agent associated with the interaction.”
United States Patent Application Publication 2007/0195945 “Systems and Methods for Facilitating Contact Center Coaching” (Korenblit et al. Aug. 23, 2007) discloses, in the Abstract, “Systems and methods for facilitating contact center coaching are provided. In this regard, a representative method includes: receiving information corresponding to a condition indicating that the agent is failing to meet pre-established criteria; scheduling a coaching meeting with the agent in order to address the condition; and scheduling training for the agent based, at least in part, on information obtained during the coaching meeting, the training being selected to address the condition; wherein the information corresponding to the condition, the information corresponding to the coaching meeting, and information corresponding to the training is integrated into a coaching session form.”
The prior art teaches post-call analysis in in-call voice recognition, but does not teach features including: real-time perceptual analysis; gamification of such analysis with respect to historical or target metrics; real-time in-call display to the agent; and real-time multi-call display to a supervisor. What is needed, therefore, is a system that overcomes the above-mentioned limitations and that includes the features enumerated above.